Thursday, October 23, 2014

#Ferguson - The Fiction Cracks

Today, no less than the Washington Post revealed that its been doing some digging of its own and revealed it under this headline: 'Evidence supports officer’s account of shooting in Ferguson.'

The story covers the autopsies (neither of which substantially differ from one another),the forensic evidence, and a number of other facts that simply don't match what we were originally told - especially by outlets like the WAPO.

The three opening paragraphs of the story pretty much spell things out...notice what I've emphasized:

Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson and Michael Brown fought for control of the officer’s gun, and Wilson fatally shot the unarmed teenager after he moved toward the officer as they faced off in the street, according to interviews, news accounts and the full report of the St. Louis County autopsy of Brown’s body.

Because Wilson is white and Brown was black, the case has ignited intense debate over how police interact with African American men. But more than a half-dozen unnamed black witnesses have provided testimony to a St. Louis County grand jury that largely supports Wilson’s account of events of Aug. 9, according to several people familiar with the investigation who spoke with The Washington Post.

Some of the physical evidence — including blood spatter analysis, shell casings and ballistics tests — also supports Wilson’s account of the shooting, The Post’s sources said, which cast Brown as an aggressor who threatened the officer’s life. The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are prohibited from publicly discussing the case.

The autopsies also reveals that Brown did indeed try to take Wilson's gun away from him during the struggle in the cab of the police SUV. The autopsy found material “consistent with products that are discharged from the barrel of a firearm” in a wound on Brown’s thumb. And Judy Melinek, a forensic pathologist in San Francisco who reviewed the report for the Post-Dispatch­, was quoted by the WAPO as saying the autopsy “supports the fact that this guy is reaching for the gun, if he has gunpowder particulate material in the wound.”

The WAPO didn't use the rest of her quote, where she added, “If he has his hand near the gun when it goes off, he’s going for the officer’s gun.”

Brown’s blood had been reportedly found on Wilson’s gun.

And then there's the lie behind the popular slogan, "hands up don't shoot!"

Brown’s official county autopsy report,which was just published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch also tell us that it's highly unlikely that Mike Brown had his hands up in surrender when he was shot.

As I reported previously, even an unnamed black witness who referred to the altercation as 'outright murder' who came before the Grand Jury a few days ago admitted that Brown had his hands out at his sides and continued to advance towards Officer Wilson after he was told to halt and get down on the ground, standard police procedure in situations like this. Based on the Post's story, other witnesses saw the same thing.

The WAPO quotes Melinek again saying the autopsy did not support witnesses who said Brown was shot while running away from Wilson, or with his hands up.

Melinek said Brown was facing Wilson when Brown took a shot to the forehead, two shots to the chest and a shot to the upper right arm. The wound to the top of Brown’s head. the fatal one would indicates he was falling forward or in a lunging position toward Officer Wilson.

The sixth shot that hit the forearm traveled from the back of the arm to the inner arm, which means Brown’s palms could not have been facing Wilson, Melinek said. The trajectory of that shot also shows Brown was not taking a standard surrender position with hands up and palms out when he was shot.

The WAPO story tried to balance this out a little with a quote from Victor W. Weedn, chairman of the George Washington University Department of Forensic Science. But even Weedn said that the autopsy reports 'raise doubts' about Brown’s hands being raised at the time of the shooting.

Weedn pointed out that the hands could have been raised and then lowered, but that all the autopsies could show is 'what happened at the time of the shooting.'

Another fact that I surmised from the very beginning that has come out in both autopsies is that Brown had a significant amount of drugs in his system, something the WAPO admits, saying its sources said the levels in Brown’s body may have been high enough to trigger hallucinations.

Or at the very least, put him in a state of mind where fighting a cop,attempting to take his gun away from him and then turning and rushing towards him might have seemed like a good idea at the time.

Needless to say, the Brown family's lawyer Benjamin Crump discounts all of this, saying he doesn't accept the autopsies or the medical examiner, because he has eyewitnesses “ that we know about that say the opposite.”

One of them is undoubtedly Dorian Johnson, who participated in an earlier strong arm robbery of a convenience store with Brown and has changed his story several times. Unfortunately for Crump, Johnson's likely to be problematical because of his own record of credibility problems.

Crump,of course needs to keep things going as much as possible. After getting his behind handed to him in the Trayvon Martin case, he needs a win, and definitely needs whatever fees he can milk out of this sorry situation.

I honestly don't know whether Officer Darren Wilson is going to be indicted. Given the widespread threats from 'the community' of further riots if he isn't, I think there's a good chance he might be. After all, the trial costs are going to come from the taxpayers, and once Wilson is indicted it becomes somebody else's problem if he's acquitted.

But I wouldn't call it justice.

I also don't mind saying that I'm sick and tired of this.

I'm sick and tired of greedy, amoral race pimps like Benjamin Crump, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton making a paycheck out of exploiting these situations and leaving misery in their wake.

I'm sick and tired of this president and his minions throwing gasoline on incidents like this for partisan political purposes and dividing the country even more than it already is.

And the worst thing is, every time this happens, it makes people less interested and willing to believe in in any real abuses that might occur.